Moments

With Laura on the move, she discovers all sorts of things on her own.  It was fun to look over and see her engaged with this toy.

While I was making my sandals, Emily and Nathan were playing doctor.  They constructed band-aids with construction paper and lots of tape.

Emily used the fabric that we are using to make her patchwork quilt to turn her and Laura into pioneers.  Laura is pretty stationary when she sits so Emily can easily dress her up.

We spent another wonderful afternoon at the Nicholson’s for the 4th of July.  They had a big party with swimming, a slip in slide, and squirt gun fight.  There was plenty of sitting around and chatting.  When it started cooling down they got out a popcorn popper and took the lid off so that the popcorn kernels flew everywhere as they popped.  The Jensens brought a big box of fireworks and Scott did some of the smaller ones with the kids.  We had a great potluck dinner.  Emily spent a lot of time in the garden (a huge, magical place) and collecting flowers with Melanie (the yellow ones are calendula flowers and they are good for your skin and fun to put in the bath).  We have all learned a lot about flowers, herbs, and plants with the Nicholsons this summer!  The next day we got home and found an inchworm on her flowers.

Morning smiles with Laura!

Nathan came over and said, “I’m Uncle Brian” while he played an oboe, the top of my music stand.  He kept it up for awhile and then Emily jumped in with the other part of my music stand as a flute to be Aunt Christine.

Our attempt at changing the color of the petals on queen anne’s lace.  I’m not sure it worked.  We’ll have to try again next year.

We did a restaurant for lunch one day.  The kids spent the morning earning pennies so they could use them for lunch.  I pulled out leftovers and assigned amounts to each item.  They had enough money for their first serving plus a few extra, but they were having so much fun they did another quick job halfway through to earn a little bit more and buy more food.

Laura is adventuring!

Emily tried planting the sunflowers behind our house.  She carefully cut them off the actual plant and dug neat holes and planted them.  I don’t think they lasted long but it was a full afternoon of work.

I found the kids scriptures packed for a “trip” in the bags the peaches came in.

Emily made a book by coloring each square with a different piece of chalk.  This was a multi-day project.  She gave one of the pieces of paper to our next door neighbors from Yemen and a few hours later they returned with a huge bag of oranges and some other food for us.